Nice Work
First edition
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| Author | David Lodge |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Paul Cox |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Campus novel, industrial novel |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
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Publication date
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1988 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| Pages | 277 pp (hardcover) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 18778725 |
| 823/.914 20 | |
| LC Class | PR6062.O36 N5 1988 |
| Preceded by | Small World: An Academic Romance |
Nice Work (1988) is a novel by British author David Lodge. It won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1988 and was also shortlisted for the Booker prize. In 1989 it was made into a four-part BBC television series directed by Christopher Menaul and starring Warren Clarke and Haydn Gwynne. The University of Birmingham served as the filming location of many of the scenes from this series.
The book describes encounters between Robyn Penrose, a feminist university teacher specialising in the industrial novel and women's writing and Vic Wilcox, the manager of an engineering firm. The relationship that develops between the unlikely pair reveals the weaknesses in each character. Robyn's academic position is precarious because of budget cuts. Vic has to deal with industrial politics at his firm.
The plot is a pastiche of the industrial novel genre, alluding to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. This gentle ribbing acts to undermine the postmodern and feminist position of Robyn, who accepts the hand of fate despite ridiculing its role as the sole restorative capable (in the minds of authors of industrial novels) of elevating the female to a serious social position. Robyn acquires insight into the pragmatic ethos whose encroachment on university culture she resents and Vic learns to appreciate the symbolic or semiotic dimension of his environment and discovers a romanticism within himself that he had previously despised in his everyday life.
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